CASE STUDY

Developing and Advancing Talent to Drive Sustainable Growth

Opportunity | With everyone talking about Millennials these days – the more experienced cohort of Generation X employees represented the future of a highly successful professional services firm. So when rumblings about a lack of clarity around career paths and professional development started to undermine the flow of talent into key roles, senior leadership convened an internal task force. The goal was to identify the competencies employees needed to enhance their professional growth and also meet the firm’s needs to ensure effective execution of its strategy. But after nine months and hundreds of man-hours, the task force had accomplished very little.

Approach | We re-energized the task force and helped to drive a more effective and accelerated decision-making process. Important deliverables soon emerged, including: a performance management and career development framework that helped employees connect the dots between their professional development and performance expectations; a career development toolkit containing training materials specific to the educational needs and individual learning styles of a variety of employees; ways of accurately measuring an individual’s performance and career development so that rewards would be aligned appropriately.

Results

Post-implementation research confirmed that employees had a deeper understanding of what was expected of them, how training and performance were linked to promotions and how they could create their own individual development programs.

A new compensation system, focused on competence and employee contributions, helping to weed out low performers and deemphasize tenure as a driver of advancement.

Targeted and specific individual development plans allowed staff to prepare for future roles while securing their loyalty and buy-in to their role and commitment to executing the firm’s strategy.